Quick Q&A: What the internet of things means for patient care

Rajiv Sabharwal Principal, PwC US September 04, 2018

PwC Health Research Institute:

Are there any emerging areas that you've seen where IoT is going to significantly change how patients are cared for?

Rajiv Sabharwal, PwC principal:

"There are two areas that I think are going to be absolutely unrecognizable from today in five to seven years’ time. One is home healthcare. The emphasis has always been on shifting clinical care from the clinical setting to home care.

For chronic conditions, you want to handle them in cost-appropriate settings. Every visit to an outpatient setting costs approximately $350. And that happens maybe once per month. You could possibly do that at home for a fraction of that cost, maybe fifty cents per instance, and you can do it on a continual basis or on a daily basis. So that's an area where a lot of emphasis has been given.

Payers are becoming more and more open to paying for telehealth, and that paradigm shift itself is going to accelerate the use of home care devices. This new environment has a lot of benefits. The physician is happy because appointments take less time and they don't have to maintain a physical space as big as they used to. The patient is happy because it’s more convenient. The insurance is happy because they have to pay less.

"Payers are becoming more and more open to paying for telehealth, and that paradigm shift itself is going to accelerate the use of home care devices."

The second thing is the management of capital or expense assets. We found that on average, a 100-bed hospital loses around $20 million a year in lost assets. These assets could range from a box of gloves all the way up to big-ticket items like an MRI or X-ray machine.

Losing that much each year is a huge deal, especially when you are running on two percent profit margin. IoT connectivity could greatly assist hospitals in keeping track of these assets and reducing product loss."